PennDOT announced that the new ramp from Cottman Avenue to southbound Interstate 95 will open to traffic on Tuesday, July 2, at about noon.
The opening of the new ramp follows the completion in late May of the new I-95 bridge and northbound off-ramp at Cottman Avenue that replaced the ones that were destroyed in a June 2023 tanker truck crash.
Section CP3 construction was done under a $52.7 million contract that began in mid-2022. In addition to building the new Cottman Avenue on-ramp, PennDOT’s contractor improved several surface streets serving the Cottman Avenue Interchange and rerouted a sanitary sewer for construction of the new ramp. Reconstruction of Wissinoming Street between Cottman and Princeton avenues, also part of the CP3 contract, will be completed later this summer.
C. Abbonizio Contractors, of Sewell, New Jersey, is the general contractor on Section CP3, a contract that was financed with 90 percent federal and 10 percent state funding.
The first phase of PennDOT’s I-95/Cottman Avenue Interchange Improvement Project (Section CP1) began in 2009 and was completed in mid-2012. Under that $34 million contract, PennDOT built two new ramps – a new southbound on-ramp at Longshore Avenue and a new northbound on-ramp from Milnor Street — and rebuilt the existing on-ramp to I-95 north from Princeton Avenue.
Additional improvements to Cottman Avenue, Princeton Avenue and State Road in the vicinity of the interchange completed under CP1 were designed to move traffic to and from I-95 in a manner that enhances pedestrian and vehicular traffic movement in the adjacent Tacony neighborhood.
Section CP2 construction began in late 2012 and ended in late 2017. Under this contract, PennDOT rebuilt and widened northbound and southbound I-95 and its bridges to four continuous lanes from Rhawn Street to Levick Street under a $212 million contract.
Section CP2 also reconstructed and improved the existing southbound off-ramp to Bleigh Avenue, extended Princeton Avenue from State Road to Milnor Street, rebuilt a section of New State Road and installed a new 84-inch water main adjacent to southbound I-95 between Cottman and Princeton avenues. ••
